"In the meantime, Undersheriff Osman Steele was on his way to the scene also. While the `Indians' were gathering in the woods beyond the upper and lower pastures, Steele and Constable Erastus Edgerton were just a few miles away at Hunting Tavern in the village, where they had stopped to have dinner and a drink. There Steele was warned, perhaps by Hunting and his wife, not to go to the sale because his life was in danger. According to the legend, Steele responded by pouring gunpowder into his drink and boasting, `Lead can't penetrate Steele.'

The `Indians' were waiting for him. Twenty-five riflemen were sent to hide in a stretch of woods below Earle's house. Their assignment was `to order the posse to stop & if they did not to fire into them.' Presumably, this would disable the horses and render the posse ineffective. . . .

As one o'clock neared, the `Indians' prepared for action. When the Roxbury tribe arrived (`pretty well liquored,' according to Barbour Stafford), Warren W. Scudder took over the command from the `tall chief' who had ordered the riflemen to their post down the road. Scudder was described as wearing `a striped calico dress, trimmed with red, a red mask and black cap.' "

By 1845, settlers had transformed the wilderness of the Catskills in upstate New York into productive farms. Their dream of owning their own land, however, became a nightmare as they tried to free themselves from the shackling leases of wealthy landlords. Considering their cause a continuation of the American Revolution, the tenants rebelled and refused to pay the rent. The more militant, like the colonists at the Boston Tea Party, called themselves `Indians.' They dressed in grotesque disguises and appeared at sales of delinquent tenants' property to intimidate bidders. Violence erupted at one of these sales near Andes in Delaware County, and a fatal bullet almost shattered their cause."

Dorothy Kubik is a free-lance writer living in Hamden, New York. Her articles have been published in Kaatskill Lifemagazine.